A group of mostly well-heeled homeowners and businesspeople turned out at City Hall to rail against a proposal to build a homeless shelter in their neighborhood. They called it "a homeless warehouse" and said it would lead to more crime and loitering and would frighten local children.

They came armed with press packets and their own numbers man who tried to prove homelessness isn't a problem there anyway.

And when they lost, they returned to Pacific Heights? Scratch that. The Marina?

Nope. Actually, it was the classic NIMBY battle except for its location: the Bayview. And for the public scolding shelter opponents received from supervisors after the board's budget committee on Wednesday unanimously approved accepting a state grant to build the shelter. It now goes to the full board.

Supervisor Eric Marsaid after the meeting he'd never seen such a heated not-in-my-backyard debate coming from the Bayview before.

"It shows a divide between residents that have been there for a long time versus people who've come in over the last few years and are part of the gentrification," he said. "They're not ready to see the suffering going on around them. They seem to be oblivious to it."

Who says the Board of Supervisors has lost its oomph? For at least one day, the city's representatives were fiery and passionate - perhaps because this particular hearing encompassed the city's biggest issues: a worsening homeless problem, displacement of longtime city residents and gentrification of one of the city's last semi-affordable neighborhoods.

Mar, along with fellow committee members John Avalosand Mark Farrell, said they were emotionally touched by the testimony of those who support the Bayview shelter, and they voted to approve it. (That also set this hearing apart; public comment usually prompts the supervisors to yawn, text or leave altogether.)

But Supervisor Malia Cohen, who represents the Bayview, wasn't buying the waterworks and said she was tremendously disappointed in the vote.

"How can it be a NIMBY battle when we're talking about a community that has transitional housing, that has a shelter at Providence Church, that has the Salvation Army and Mother Brown's?" she asked, referring to a drop-in center for homeless people.

"I don't see half those services in District Two," she added, taking a swipe at Farrell, the supervisor for some of the city's toniest neighborhoods, including Pacific Heights and the Marina. He opposed a facility to house 50 homeless youth in his neighborhood, though it too moved forward.

So maybe it's not OK in my backyard, but yours is fine.

At issue is a state grant for $978,000 awarded to the Human Services Agency to build a 100-bed shelter in an empty warehouse next to the Bayview Multi-Service Drop-In Center, better known as Mother Brown's Kitchen, at the corner of Van Dyke Avenue and Jennings Street.

Mother Brown's offers case management, computer training, a clothing bank, hot meals and referrals to other social services. It isn't licensed as a shelter, though scores of people do sleep there at night, sitting upright in chairs. The only other place for homeless people to sleep indoors in the Bayview is on mats on the floor of Providence Baptist Church.

Opponents of the shelter did raise some good points. For instance, nobody at City Hall, including Trent Rhorer, director of the Human Services Agency, can explain how the city's homeless count in 2009 found 444 homeless people in District 10, which includes the Bayview, and a whopping 1,151 two years later. (That jump helped prompt the grant application.)

Rhorer acknowledged that no other district has ever seen such a big leap, but said he stands by the count. He pointed out that this year's count found 1,274 people.

Alka Joshihelped lead the charge of residents opposed to the shelter. The 54-year-old marketing consultant moved into the Bayview eight years ago with her husband and "two fabulous dogs," Coco and Ubu.

She said parents in the neighborhood are particularly concerned that the new shelter site is near a pool and playground.

"They're very concerned about adding yet more poverty and despair for children to see," she said. "The city has not anticipated the change in the kind of families that are moving here."

She, Cohen and others also said the city didn't include them in the planning process until the grant was awarded - and now the city says it will lose all the money if the shelter isn't built exactly as spelled out in the grant application.

But in the end, Rhorer argued, what matters most is that there are hundreds of homeless people in the Bayview and no real shelter with beds for them to sleep in at night.

"Sometimes humanity has to trump process," he said.

Quote of the week

"I was floored."

Supervisor Eric Mar, who is not sweet on Supervisor Scott Wiener's stealing his thunder by introducing a tax on sugary sodas for next year's ballot. Mar has his own competing measure.